“No, but when I didn’t get a letter last week, I had the notion that he might. I am excited that he’s here, and the fact that he is not in a hurry to head right back is good news as well. Tomorrow I am going to meet him in town with the solicitor over my affairs in Boston. I will probably be gone most of the day.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
For a second, he looks panicked, then his features calm.
“I thought you were going to can the rest of the tomatoes tomorrow?”
“They can wait a day if you need me.”
“No, just going to be a boring meeting about old contracts and things that need to be sold.”
“In that case, can you grab an extra case of jars on your way back?”
“Absolutely.”
The relief on his face is almost instant. Trying not to read more into it than usual, I clean up the dishes while Grant sees to the animals. When he comes back in, he has my basket in his hand, the shirt Blue was sitting on missing.
“I hung up the shirt with all the others. If you don’t mind, I’m going to turn in early this evening. I am tuckered out and I need to leave early in the morning.”
“Go on, I have some sewing I need to do before I turn in.”
I can tell he’s distracted because he just kisses my forehead and turns for our bedroom, completely lost in his thoughts. The next few weeks seem to be the same. Grant is constantly leaving for town or meeting a random neighbor I’ve never heard of. On random days, he comes home covered in sawdust, or too clean to have been working in the mine. The entire time, I tell myself it’s nothing, that men don’t always tell their wives what’s going on in their day. I just thought we were more to each other than that.
Fall came and went quickly and I don’t know who’s more shocked, me or Grant, the morning we wake up to an early snowfall only a few days before Christmas.
I find Grant staring out at it, like it has personally offended him.
“Grant honey, what’s the matter? This will be melted in a few days. You know how these storms come and go, come sit down and relax. You’ve been running so much here lately, you could use a day off.”
“I wanted us to go find a tree before it got too cold.”
“The trees aren’t n going anywhere. We can go ahead and start on some of the decorations if you want.”
He seems to come to some sort of decision because when he turns back, it’s my Grant staring back at me. “Go get your coat, the one Beatrice just sent, and put on some mittens. We are going to make the best of this and use the sleigh.”
CHAPTER 18
LAUREN
My nose is cold, and I can’t feel the tips of my fingers, but I can’t stop laughing at Bolt as he pulls the sleigh and us all over the place, no matter how hard Grant tries to get him to go one way then another.
Finally, he calms down and Grant heads toward the tree line. I finally comment when he’s passed several perfect trees for the house. “Are we heading somewhere specific? Look, there’s another one … you’ve passed up a dozen trees already.”
“Yeah, I know, but I saw one off in a field the other day that screamed out, ‘I am the one’. I want you to see it first.”
A few minutes later, I start smelling wood smoke. “Do you smell that?”
“Nope.”
I look over at him and frown. He didn’t even ask me what I was smelling before saying no, but he seems determined to reach this one spot. Suddenly, the woods open up and before us is a home I’d never seen before.
Grant stops the sleigh in the front yard, looking at it and then at me.
“I had no idea there were any homes out this way. My heavens Grant, it’s beautiful, look at that porch. Whoever built this sure put an awful lot of care into every little detail. It even has a stone walkway that someone has shoveled off.”
“You like it?”
“It’s stunning. Do you know who lives here?”
